Hello there! I’m Walt and I have been running for 35+ years. Welcome to my website!
My running started in the late 1980s on the East Coast of Canada, running track and field in high school. My core race there was the 400m, though my best individual finish during high school came in the 100m hurdles. The 800m and 4x400m relay rounded out my schedule.
When I went on to military college, running variety expanded considerably. I joined the cross-country team and the indoor track team, where the 600m became my primary race alongside the 4×400. In my last two years there I added marathon training, racing a half marathon and full marathon each year.
That was my running foundation. The next three decades built on it.
The Races That Stuck
Three full marathons, all run in my twenties. Personal best: 3:20.
Half marathons across a much longer arc — my PR of 1:21 came on the very first half I ever raced, in the mid-1990s. The lesson there became one of the central ironies of my running career: the times I assumed would be easy to improve once I had more experience never were.
The single most satisfying race of my life was the 10K at the Canadian Armed Forces national running championships, where I clocked 36:06 — my 10K PR. The only time I competed at that level.
5Ks have stayed in the rotation across decades. My personal best of approximately 17:36 was set in my twenties. A more recent one a few weeks ago: 23:28 in my fifties. The math is what it is, and that’s fine.
What’s Stayed and What’s Changed
These days I run about 100 km a month. The competitive PRs are decades in the past — but the competitive instinct hasn’t gone anywhere. When I race now, I’m focused on how well I can finish in my age category. It still gets the juices going.
Three and a half decades of running has also come with its share of setbacks. IT band issues in my younger days. Knee problems during my last marathon that affected the result and, eventually, contributed to my decision to shift toward halfs and shorter distances. A stubborn hamstring pull about a year and a half ago that took physiotherapy and patience to recover from — and earlier hamstring pulls in my younger days.
Those experiences shape how I think about gear, training progression, and recovery. They’re a big part of why I take shoe lifespan seriously: when you’ve worked your way back from an injury, you don’t want to risk a return by running on shoes that have stopped doing their job.
I’m currently running in Topo Athletic shoes after deciding to try a roomier toe box. So far the experience has been positive.
Why This Site Exists
Running has been an integral part of essentially my entire adult life. Over decades I’ve accumulated a fair amount of practical knowledge — what wears out and when, which gear actually matters and which gear is marketing, how training adapts as you age, how injuries and inflammation respond to different approaches.
This site is where I share that knowledge.
I built it for two reasons. First, running is a genuine passion, and the budget-conscious end of the gear conversation is poorly served by most running content — which tends to assume everyone has $200 to spend on every category. Second, I wanted to see whether a site like this could become a modest income stream by recommending products I’d actually consider buying myself.
How I Write About Gear
I’ll be direct about the approach, because it matters.
Every article on this site combines my own decades of running experience with current published research, expert reviews, and reviewer consensus. I don’t fabricate testing claims. If I haven’t personally logged hundreds of miles in a specific shoe, I won’t pretend I have.
What I do bring is the context — the experience to judge what specs actually matter, which reviewer claims are worth trusting, and which advice holds up against three and a half decades of running. When I recommend a product, it’s one I’d consider buying myself based on the evidence available. When I tell you to skip something, it’s because the evidence doesn’t justify the price.
On Affiliate Links
Some links on this site are affiliate links — meaning if you click through and make a purchase on Amazon, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This is disclosed on every article and you can read the full statement on the Disclosure page.
What I won’t do is recommend something I don’t believe in because the commission is good. The whole point of writing budget-focused running content is to genuinely help readers save money. Sacrificing that for a few extra dollars would defeat the purpose.
If you’d like to get in touch, the Contact page is the easiest way.